As we do every spring, K9IU will be working the Indiana QSO party on May 7 – 8. The contest runs between 11 AM EDT to 11 PM EDT. We’re scheduling a work day to prepare our station for the contest — members are invited to check their email for the scheduling poll link. On the work day, we’ll need to organize the shack, check our antennas, test the equipment, and handle some club administrivia.

The phone mode part of the ARRL November Sweepstakes contest is
approaching. The contest period begins at 2100 UTC ( 1600 local ) on
Saturday the 21st and runs through 0259 UTC Monday ( 2159 Sunday local ).

Plan to arrive an hour or two before the contest start so we can
review contest rules, the exchange, and set up logging. If you can’t
make it Saturday afternoon, stop by the shack any time during the
contest period and operate with us. We’ll be monitoring 9-4 as usual
to coordinate operating times — call in and see who’s in the shack.

I will bring one logging computer which will be available throughout
the contest, and I’ll have a copy of the latest N1MM available on a
USB drive.

We’re pleased to announce that K9IU has two new repeaters at the IMU site. In the left rack is a 70cm Motorola MOTOTRBO repeater on loan to our club from W9AMT of the Hoosier DMR project. Hoosier DMR maintains a primer for those starting out in DMR. In the right rack is the K9IU repeater, 146.94 MHz, negative offset. New 9-4 is a Yaesu SystemFusion DR-1X, receiving in “Automatic Mode Select” and transmitting in analog FM. Users with Yaesu C4FM radios can talk into the repeater on digital, but the machine will always be configured to receive FM also. If we get a higher adoption curve of SystemFusion radios, then we may switch the transmit to AMS also, effectively yielding a digital 9-4 and an analog 9-4.

Remember that 9-4 is currently using 107.2 Hz PL tone. It has been determined, math courtesy of WB9TLH, that the output of 9-4 and output of the nearby 146.64 repeater give a mixing product on the 9-4 input frequency, sticking our squelch open if the 6-4 audio has the same tone. So, we’re temporarily on 107.2 Hz until we can tune a cavity filter to place in-line with the RX side of the duplexer to prevent desense of the receiver. Thanks to WB9VPG of Bloomington South for letting us borrow some cans to try.

The Motorola MOTOTRBO and Yaesu SystemFusion repeaters at the IMU repeater site.